A convicted sex offender was sentenced Friday to life in prison for chaining a woman to a truck in his Tacoma garage for two weeks in 2021. The jury that found him guilty could not decide if he raped the woman as prosecutors claimed.
Jurors last month found 56-year-old Henry William Hauser Jr. guilty of first-degree kidnapping, indecent liberties with forcible compulsion and second-degree identity theft after a weeks-long trial in Pierce County Superior Court. First-degree kidnapping and indecent liberties are considered most serious offenses, and with two prior convictions also considered most serious offenses, Hauser's only punishment available to a judge under the state's three strikes law was life without parole.
"Your behavior when not incarcerated is a danger to somebody," Judge Philip Sorensen told Hauser. "I don't know who that will be, but it will be somebody in the future."
Hauser's first strike came in 2007 when he was convicted of second-degree kidnapping in Pierce County for locking a 19-year-old woman in a bedroom of his residence for about a month, according to court records, threatening to kill her family if she tried to escape. Hauser was incarcerated for a little less than four years.
A little more than a year later, Hauser was arrested after a 16-year-old woman reported that she'd been abducted by the man at knifepoint and raped, court records show. Hauser was convicted of second-degree assault and other charges in 2014, and he was sentenced to 80 months.
Hauser was released in July 2021 and within months he kidnapped the victim in the current case.
Prosecutors alleged in charging papers that Hauser offered to let a homeless woman stay in his garage, and she went home with him Nov. 10, 2021. The two hung out for a while, but when she became uncomfortable and tried to leave, Hauser grabbed her and bound her to a truck with a chain.
Over two weeks, the woman later told Tacoma police detectives, Hauser repeatedly sexually assaulted her and gave her drugs that caused memory issues. At times the man told her he was going to slowly kill her or said he wanted to "keep" her.
"She said the defendant would make statements to her like he was acting out a fantasy," prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
One day, Hauser left the key to her chains out, and the woman retrieved it and hid it from him, eventually using it to make her escape on Nov. 28, according to court documents. A man walking down South Sheridan Avenue in the city's Hilltop neighborhood was waved down by the woman that day, and she told him she had been held captive. A chain was around her ankle, and he called the police.
Photos later showed bruising on both of the woman's ankles, according to court documents. Prosecutors said police served a search warrant on Hauser's garage, where they found the truck as the woman had described it, bedding in its bed and a bucket she'd been given to urinate in.
Police got a tip that Hauser was at Walmart Dec. 2. He initially gave a false name when an officer contacted him, but the officer learned his true identity and took him into custody.
Hauser has maintained that he is innocent. He claimed he met the woman on a cold and rainy day and took pity on her, offering to let her stay in a garage owned by his father, according to the defense's trial brief.
His attorney, Stephen Johnson, wrote that the woman offered to perform sex acts for drug money but Hauser declined. The document alleges the woman set a fire in his garage Nov. 27, and when Hauser had her leave, she made false allegations to remove the man from his home so she could steal his property to sell for drug money.
"All I got to say is that you're convicting an innocent man to life," Hauser told Judge Sorensen.
Before Hauser's sentencing hearing, Johnson made a motion Friday for a new trial, claiming that prosecutors intentionally revealed Hauser's prior convictions and law enforcement contacts to the jury, prejudicing them against him. The attorney said the fact that the jury was hung on Hauser's rape charges suggests Hauser's rights were seriously affected by the misconduct he experienced at trial.
Sorensen said a violation of his orders occurred, but it appeared to be inadvertent. He also said he thought the jury wasn't able to reach a verdict on the defendant's rape charges because to do so, one side of the jury or the other would have had to compromise their true beliefs. The motion for a new trial was denied.
Hauser also pleaded guilty Friday to failing to register as a sex offender in 2021.
